Brainrush 03 - Beyond Judgment

by Bard, Richard

  “Flip it,” Sarafina said between sobs.

  “O-oh, yeah, sorry,” Ahmed said. He clenched his fists.

  “It’s okay,” Jake said in Italian. “I know there is much to talk about.” He gave Sarafina a squeeze and pulled out of the embrace. He turned back to Alex. His features softened, and Francesca realized with a start that something had changed within him.

  “My son,” he said in Italian. He reached out. Alex holstered his tablet. Then he stepped slowly into the embrace. After a moment’s hesitation, his fingers curled into the folds of Jake’s shirt. A lone tear ran down his cheek.

  A wave of relief crashed over Francesca. Only in her dreams had she ever imagined such a sight. Sarafina moved beside her, and they absorbed the moment together. Jake captured Francesca’s gaze. She reveled in the emotions he radiated—loyalty, commitment, and the unbreakable bond of father and son.

  It gave her hope.

  Chapter 17

  Isola di San Michele

  HIS ENCOUNTER WITH the boy—his son—changed everything for Jake. He felt warmth from the child that was unlike anything he’d ever known. It seemed to fill the room. A dam broke in Jake’s mind, and a flood of emotions burst forth. He felt a sudden bond with the people around him—a depth of feeling normally possible only after years of association.

  Francesca captured his gaze. It seemed as if she had sensed the change. The longing he saw in her eyes stirred him. It took force of will to break contact and take in the others.

  They were family.

  He trusted them.

  He cared about them.

  But he didn’t remember them.

  The link with Alex had unlocked doors to previously held emotions. But memories of his past remained hidden. The juxtaposition made him dizzy. A part of him wanted to rush forth and embrace them all. Another warned him to keep the revelation to himself.

  The choice was made for him when a gondolier rushed in and shouted, “We’ve captured one of them!”

  Thirty minutes later, the prisoner sat in a chair in the center of the room. His hands were bound behind him and there was a hood over his head. Blood leaked from a bandaged wound on his arm. The kids had been ushered back to their room. The rest of them surrounded the man.

  “I’m goin’ first,” Tony growled. The knuckles on his ham-size fists were white.

  Jake couldn’t interpret the words, but he understood the sentiment well enough. The man in the chair represented everything that had gone wrong in the past twenty-four hours.

  Francesca edged closer and translated the discourse.

  “Take it easy, big guy,” Marshall said, placing a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “This is Mario’s show.”

  The old gondolier stepped forward and removed the hood. There was a collective gasp from those around him. Including Jake. He recognized the man immediately. It was the American who’d saved his life in Focette.

  The man blinked against the sudden brightness, grunting behind the strip of duct tape on his mouth. Mario ripped it off.

  “Jeez!” the man said, sounding more like a teenager than someone in his late twenties. “Am I glad to see you.”

  Everyone seemed to speak at once.

  “Timmy?” Marshall asked. “What the heck are you doing here?”

  “Wait a minute,” Lacey interjected. “I remember you!”

  “Doc’s friend,” Tony said. “You helped get us out of Venezuela.”

  “You were at Jake’s funeral,” Francesca added softly. “But you knew he wasn’t dead?”

  The room stilled.

  Timmy turned to Jake. He blew out a breath. “It’s a long story.”

  Francesca’s voice was choked as she translated his words.

  Timmy’s brow pinched in confusion. “Hold on,” he said, studying Jake. “You spoke English just yesterday. Don’t you remember what happened in the parking lot?” He rubbed his wrists after Tony used his pocketknife to cut through his bindings. “You moved like a bat out of hell to lay into those dudes.”

  The knuckles on Jake’s right hand were still raw. He recalled the fight.

  Timmy continued, “Then you bandaged me up. Spoke English. Knew my name.”

  The scene was cloudy in Jake’s mind. “I only remember you telling me to come to Venice,” he said in Italian.

  Timmy slumped. “I thought the mini had brought you back for good,” he said. “Where is it, anyway?”

  “The mini?”

  Francesca continued to translate between the two men.

  “Yeah,” Timmy said. “The miniature pyramid. Let me see it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Timmy’s jaw slackened. “Oh, no.”

  He told them what he knew. About Jake’s new heart, the coma, and the top secret center where he’d been kept alive. About their inability to bring him to consciousness using conventional methods.

  “It all came to a head six months ago,” he said, “when the two pyramids appeared in orbit.”

  “I remember that,” Lacey said. “It trended on Twitter for a couple days.”

  Marshall said, “Until the government explained them away as secret Chinese satellites.”

  “A cover-up,” Timmy said.

  “But the Chinese confirmed it,” Marshall objected.

  “They were a part of it. In fact, every major government in the world was a part of it. They still are.”

  Marshall’s eyes widened as if a sudden realization dawned on him. “Wait a second,” he said. “Are you saying those satellites are actually the same two pyramids that Jake launched from Afghanistan and Venezuela?”

  “Afraid so.”

  A chill fell over the group. Francesca summed it up for Jake in Italian, but he was having difficulty absorbing what he was hearing. I launched a pyramid from Venezuela, too?

  Marshall was the first to speak. “I thought it was supposed to take them forty years to travel back and forth between Earth and their home planet.”

  “You’re right,” Timmy said. “And we’ve rechecked the numbers over and over. Forty years is accurate. Returning any sooner defies the laws of physics.”

  Marshall’s shoulders slumped. “You mean the laws of physics as we know them.”

  “Yeah,” Timmy agreed sullenly. “That’s what scares the crap out of us.”

  “Which explains the cover-up,” Tony said.

  “Exactly,” Timmy replied. “Sure, the level of cooperation was unprecedented. But the alternative was world panic. They needed to buy time while they figured out what to do. The result? They built a device—a chair—that they hoped to use to communicate with the pyramids. It incorporated the mini—a small component of the first pyramid Jake had launched. But they couldn’t make the device work. They tried for weeks. Its design required the use of a human brain as a conduit. They had plenty of volunteers, but their minds simply couldn’t handle the load. That’s when they decided to proceed with an experimental method to revive Jake. It was risky. Very risky. But in light of his”—he paused as he looked at Jake—“history with the objects, they felt they had no choice. They needed his help. If he didn’t make it through the procedure, so be it. They’d be no worse off.”

  He paused until Francesca had completed the translation. Jake was having trouble grasping the magnitude of what Timmy was saying. No wonder his brain had decided to close off his memory.

  Timmy continued, “But someone didn’t want Jake revived. The night before the procedure, an assassin started a fire in the room beneath his. Jake’s bed was engulfed within minutes. If I hadn’t been working late…”

  “My God,” Francesca added after she translated. Mario moved beside her and placed an arm around her shoulder.

  Jake was shocked. “You saved my life,” he said in Italian.

  “Just returning the favor,” Timmy said. “I’d been analyzing the mini in the lab. I unplugged you, wheeled you out, and hoped for the best. I nearly had a heart attack when you came to in the back of t
he van.”

  “Speaking only Italian,” Tony said.

  “Uh-huh. With total amnesia.”

  “I don’t remember any of it,” Jake said.

  “Why would you? You were delirious. Anyway, I knew about the problems they were having with the chair. Three people had died already trying to use it. In your state, there was no way you’d survive it. So I hid you in the one place I knew they’d never look—a place where you spoke the language.”

  They all stared at Timmy in amazement. As if he could see the dumbfounded question they wrestled with, he said, “Hey, transporting him to Italy was easier than you’d think. I’ve got skills.”

  Marshall harrumphed, Lacey smiled, and Tony crossed his arms and hiked an eyebrow.

  Jake liked the way they melded together in the face of everything that spiraled around them. He felt fortunate to call them friends. He moved to Timmy and offered his hand. “Grazie,” he said.

  Timmy shook it. “No prob.” His face flushed. After a moment he said, “So…I assume you guys are using off-grid protocols down here.”

  Marshall said, “Of course.”

  “But you still have secure Internet access?”

  A nod from Mario.

  “Then I’ve got some good news.”

  Ten minutes later, the blip on Mario’s laptop screen settled on a point in the Swiss Alps. Timmy hovered over the keyboard.

  Marshall sat beside him. “Zoom it,” he said.

  “Chill, man,” Timmy said. “I’m three steps ahead of you.”

  Marshall bristled, Lacey chuckled, and Francesca translated.

  Jake watched the screen. The satellite image tightened on a tenth-century castle. A blanket of snow covered the surrounding terrain.

  “The radio frequency identification—RFID—chips are microscopic,” Timmy said. “My own design. I floated them in a metallic coating that matched the mini’s finish. They latch onto any cell or wireless signal within a quarter mile.”

  Marshall sat back in his chair. He nodded. “Respect.”

  “Thanks,” Timmy said. They fist-bumped.

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother.”

  “So that’s real time?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you really think that thing will restore my memory?” Jake asked.

  Francesca’s hand clasped her locket as she relayed the question in English.

  Timmy turned around to face Jake. “I can’t be sure. But it seemed to work when you held it yesterday. Besides, what other options do we have?”

  Jake nodded. “Then we’ve got work to do.”

  “Here we go again,” Tony said.

  Chapter 18

  Swiss Alps

  VICTOR TIGHTENED THE fur collar around his neck. He watched as the ten-person gondola swung to a stop at the far side of the space. The suspension cables creaked. The storm had dumped two feet of snow on the surrounding terrain. But the weather front had broken, at least temporarily. Sunlight lanced through the opening in the cliff face. All but one of the crates of precious cargo had been taken off the mountain. Four men and a hand-operated lift waited patiently for access to the final package.

  Victor turned to face the steel door behind him. “Open it,” he said.

  Hans entered a code on a panel beside the door. The lock clicked and they stepped inside the small room. The door closed behind them. Halogen track lights illuminated a single five-foot-square crate. Its hinged top was open. An ink-black upside-down pyramid was supported inside. The artifact had been found by Victor’s ancestor a thousand years ago.

  “The time is upon us,” he said softly. He removed his gloves and ran his hand over the smooth surface of the object. It felt cool to the touch. The detail of the etched images around the perimeter of its upward-facing base never ceased to impress him. Each laser-like engraving depicted ancient man raining violence upon his brethren. Clubs crushed skulls, sharpened stones pierced bellies, and infants were smashed underfoot. His hand stopped on the final glyph. Three hairless humanoid figures stood on an outcrop of rock above a tribe of ancestral fur-clothed Homo sapiens. Their backs were turned, and Victor imagined expressions of serenity on their faces. A small pyramid hovered over their outstretched hands. Lances of light shot from the object and pierced the heads of those below. Their wild-eyed expressions were frozen in anguish.

  There was a series of embossed shapes and patterns inside the track of perimeter images. Over the centuries, the Order’s scholars and scientists had been unable to solve the riddle they represented. But Jake Bronson had done so in a matter of minutes. Victor shook his head, marveling at the irony. His gaze traveled to the center of the pyramid. There was a four-inch square etched into it, its surface untouched by engravings. Victor reached into his coat pocket, removed the mini, and placed it on the square.

  It was a perfect match.

  Chapter 19

  Swiss Alps

  LACEY NOTICED JAKE scratch his fake whiskers again. He said they’d itched almost as much as the silicone nose he wore.

  “Even your mother wouldn’t recognize you,” she said in Italian. She sat across from Jake in the utility van. The motor idled. Marshall, Tony, and Timmy were inside with them. The vehicle was parked on an overlook off an alpine highway in Switzerland. They’d driven through the night in two vehicles. It was midmorning. The outside temperature was below freezing. The sky was clear, but dark clouds gathered on the horizon.

  “My mother?” Jake asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Lacey said in Italian, realizing that no one had mentioned anything to Jake about his immediate family. “A sister, too. They’re both terrific.” She combed one last strand of his slicked-back hair into place. “That’ll do.”

  Her acting background had proved to be a critical asset. A dark wig, clever makeup, and a coquettish attitude had changed her from a blushing bride to a clingy middle-aged mistress. Her tight-fitting traveling clothes finished the look. The men had been duly amazed at the transformation. She appreciated it. For Jake’s part, the facial disguise needed to be more extensive. But he was perfectly typecast for the acting role of an Italian artist on vacation. The Fiat sedan parked behind them would provide the ideal cover.

  In the van, Tony and Marshall sat in the driver and front passenger seats. They each had binoculars pressed to their eyes.

  “Once we clear that outcrop beneath the gondola, we’re home free,” Marshall said.

  Lacey translated for Jake.

  “Christ,” Tony said, adjusting the focus knob. “I’m gettin’ too old for this crap.”

  Lacey and Jake turned their attention to the computer station that Timmy had set up in the back of the van. The young scientist had connected one of two monitors to the electronic image on Tony’s binoculars. When the image zoomed tighter, Lacey understood Tony’s reservations. The snow-dusted cliff face looked treacherous.

  “No worries, dude,” Marshall said. “I’ll blaze the trail.”

  Lacey explained to Jake that Marshall had been an avid rock climber since childhood. It was the only form of exercise he practiced besides finger-dancing on a keyboard.

  The mission wouldn’t have been possible if it hadn’t been for the safe house in Geneva. Timmy had explained that US government agencies had over a dozen of them scattered around the city. Between Timmy’s access codes and Marshall’s hacking abilities, it had been a simple matter to initiate what appeared to be an executive order to prep one for the arrival of a clandestine team. They’d gone there first. Weapons, disguise kits, and tech equipment—it was all there. The clothes and climbing gear, they purchased along the way.

  “Man, oh, man,” Timmy said. “I still can’t believe we’re doing this.”

  “It’s like we said,” Lacey reminded him. “What choice do we have?”

  “Even so,” Timmy said. “This is way out of my league. I’m not what you’d call an outdoorsman. Besides, I can’t even imagine the shit storm that’s waiting for me back home.”

&nbs
p; Marshall chuckled. “Welcome to the club, dude. This sort of thing is par for the course when Jake’s around. The rest of us learned that the hard way a long time ago.”

  “I should’ve been home by now with Mel and the kids,” Tony said. “She’s gonna be pissed.”

  Lacey said, “Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon. So shut up.”

  Jake waited for Lacey to translate the interchange. She chose not to. He shrugged. She figured he got the drift of it anyway. She hoped they were making the right move with this plan. After all, when they’d first discovered that the owner of the castle was Victor Brun, Timmy had said he was one of the good guys.

  “Heck, he’s the one behind the Geneva conference,” Timmy had said. “Without his political savvy and connections, world leaders would’ve never gotten together.”

  “Then why not simply knock on the door and ask for the mini?” Marshall had asked.

  It was Lacey who had pointed out what a bad idea that was.

  “Think about it,” she had said. “Jake shows up out of the blue and suddenly people are trying to kill him. Next thing you know, Interpol is involved and they decide they want him alive. Then the mini shows up in this guy’s basement? From everything Timmy has told us about it, it’s critical to what is going on with the pyramids up above. This Brun character is probably examining it as we speak. As important as it is, why on earth would he let us borrow it just so we can try to restore Jake’s memory?”

  “Well, they might,” Marshall had said.

  “Yeah, but they might not,” Tony had said. “We can’t take that chance. We know how important Jake’s memory is to what’s going on up there.” He had pointed to the stars. “But nobody else does. Nope. Lacey’s right. We’ve gotta go get it. No matter what. And a quick smash-and-grab is the surest way. They’d never expect it.”

  The castle loomed dark on the ridge. Lacey glanced at the second display on Timmy’s console. A 3-D digitized image of the ancient structure rotated on the screen. A blinking light on one of the lower levels identified the location of the mini.